On August 2, the 16th year of Chongzhen (1643), the imperial edict from the imperial court reached De'an Mansion, and they spared no effort to praise Wu Di and Shang Yi. At the same time, Shang Yi was named the deputy general of the Pingtang invaders.
Lieutenant generals are also called deputy generals. They are one level higher than deputy generals. They are generally divided into garrison lieutenants and general lieutenants. The former has a fixed garrison area and is a senior local general, while the latter can only be regarded as a lieutenant general, with both real power and status.
Worse than the former. However, now that Shang Yi has no fixed garrison, he cannot be regarded as a left-behind lieutenant general. However, the imperial court gave him the title of "Ping Kou" to distinguish him from ordinary lieutenants. Shang Yi also serves as a concurrent post.
Under the command of the Shandong Dusi, he can also be regarded as a local military commander in Shandong.
In this battle with Li Zicheng, Shang Yi's contribution was not small, but he had to be promoted one level. This was not because the court wanted to suppress it, but because Shang Yi's current status was already very high.
It is impossible to upgrade several levels continuously like in the past. For example, Wu Zong is now a cabinet bachelor. Although he has served as a supervisor, he has only been awarded the title of marquis.
Of course, awards and promotions are secondary. In the imperial edict, Chongzhen also formally ordered Wu Di and Shang Yi to march south immediately to recover Wuchang Mansion, and to join Zuo Liangyu to attack Zhang Xianzhong. At the same time, Liu Zeqing's troops were also mobilized to station in Ru.
In Ning Mansion, Sun Chuanting, who assisted Sun Chuanting in leaving the country and heading south, attacked Li Zicheng from a flank.
Wu Di was an experienced official. As soon as he heard the content of the imperial edict, he knew that this must be Chen Yan's trick again. He must have seen his supervisor defeat Li Zicheng and win consecutively, and he was afraid that he would destroy Li Zicheng again, so he decided to
He made great achievements and replaced him as the chief minister of the cabinet after returning to the court. Therefore, Sun Chuanting was asked to go out to deal with Li Zicheng, and he was transferred to deal with Zhang Xianzhong. This was to prevent himself from making a great contribution to annihilating Li Zicheng.
But even though he knew, Wu Di was not Zuo Liangyu, who dared to use the emperor's imperial edict as toilet paper. Firstly, he was bound by traditional Confucian moral thought, and he still had a considerable sense of awe for the emperor's orders. Secondly, Wu Di
He does not have military power in his hands. Although Wu Yi is now the governor and can oversee the military affairs of Huguang, Henan, Sichuan, Nanzhilu and other places, he is not a military commander and has been an official in the capital. He also lacks local knowledge.
Influence, although he has more than 100,000 soldiers and horses under his name, in fact, none of the soldiers is really his. The real power of his direct lineage is only the hundreds of servants raised by Wu Di, which is far inferior to that of Sun Chuanting or Zuo.
Liangyu was even inferior to Shang Yi. In this sense, Wu Di had no ability to challenge the imperial court. Therefore, he could only accept the imperial court's orders.
But Wu Di is the person who supervises the battle on the front line. Of course he knows that the current Li Zicheng is not the Li Zicheng who was defeated as soon as he was defeated. Regardless of how many defeats he has fought now, after all, Jing Jing is strong and has no injuries.
When it comes to the fundamentals, there is still a strong combat effectiveness. However, except for the more than 10,000 soldiers and horses of Shang Yi's troops, the rest are not of great use. However, relying only on the strength of Shang Yi's troops, Li Zicheng can't defeat Li Zicheng.
After a few battles, it was possible to recover several cities, but it was not easy to completely defeat or even destroy Li Zicheng. Therefore, Wu Zongcai urgently urged the court to quickly order Sun Chuanting to leave the country, and formed a north-south pincer attack with Shang Yi.
, it is possible to truly defeat Li Zicheng. Otherwise, in the current Ming Dynasty, the strength of that party alone is not enough to deal with Li Zicheng alone.
But now that Chen Yan had done something like this, Wu Di thought to himself, let Sun Chuanting compensate Li Zicheng for being so good. At least he still had Shang Yi under him, who could withstand several battles. But who did Sun Chuanting have under him? Why?
Can he defeat Li Zicheng? If you want to reach out and pick ready-made peaches, it's so cheap. You can't eat mutton, and you'll get a fishy mess. When Sun Chuanting is defeated by Li Zicheng, let's see how Chen Yan ends the situation. And he
It may not be a bad thing to attack Zhang Xianzhong instead, because Zhang Xianzhong's strength is far inferior to Li Zicheng's, so it is easier to deal with. Killing Zhang Xianzhong is also a big achievement.
The problem now is, just to see how to coax Shang Yi to willingly give up attacking Li Zicheng and attack Zhang Xianzhong instead. Now Wu Di has completely seen through that the other Ming armies are unreliable. Whether they are attacking Li Zicheng or Zhang Xianzhong, he is still
It depends on Shang Yi's team.
Since defeating Li Zicheng in Suizhou and capturing De'an Prefecture, the merchant army has not carried out major military operations. They rested in De'an Prefecture for more than ten days and carried out some minor repairs. At the same time, they transferred all grain and grass supplies from Guangzhou.
When arriving at De'an Prefecture, Shang Yi obviously planned to make De'an Prefecture his new stationed location. Because De'an Prefecture is connected to Xiangyang at the top and Wuchang at the bottom, the geographical location is much better than Guangzhou.
Now the number of the Merchant Army has expanded rapidly. It not only has gathered the original three regiments, one cavalry battalion, and two reconnaissance companies, totaling more than 11,000 people, but also has 2,000 auxiliary troops and logistics personnel.
More than five hundred people.
When they were in Guangzhou, there were more than 1,400 Ming troops who wanted to join Shang Yi. After more than ten days of training, nearly 300 people chose to quit because they could not bear the strict training and military discipline requirements, but they still stayed.
More than a thousand people were recruited. Because they had basically adapted to the previous stage of training, it was estimated that there would be no large-scale withdrawals. This result was also somewhat beyond Shang Yi's expectation. According to his expectation, six people could be left behind.
Seven hundred people would be good.
It turns out that the current situation is different from that of Qi Jiguang's time. The Qi family's army was founded in the middle of the Ming Dynasty. At that time, the Ming Dynasty's national power was still relatively strong, the society was relatively stable, and the people could still live, and the social atmosphere was discriminatory against military commanders.
, so ordinary people are not willing to serve as soldiers. Most of the people in the army are unemployed people. Before joining the army, they have acquired many bad habits. In addition, the military discipline is lax and the work style is corrupt.
Naturally, they all became soldiers.
At this time, we were in troubled times. In addition to the unemployed people in society, a considerable number of the members of the army were poor people. Because they could no longer survive, they had to choose to join the army and rely on a meager military salary to avoid intensification.
Although they have been in the army for a long time and have picked up some bad habits, after all, these people are from poor farmers and are quite different from the unemployed people in society. They are still able to endure hardships and stand hard work, so as long as they are given a
It is not difficult to transform a good environment.
The Merchant Army provides just such an environment. Although the training is difficult, and there is no military pay before officially becoming a soldier of the Merchant Army, the meals are guaranteed to be sufficient every day, and you can definitely eat them. At the same time, these
The Ming army also discovered that in the Merchant Army, the relationship between officers and soldiers was very harmonious. It was completely different from other armies, where officers were superior and could beat and insult soldiers arbitrarily. Even some officers with higher status could not live in peace.
It is also relatively simple. Including Shang Yi himself, they are basically the same as ordinary soldiers. They live in ordinary camps, eat the same meals, and are served by at most one or two orderlies around them. They are also kind to ordinary soldiers.
He doesn't look like a second-grade general.
All this was a very common thing in the merchant army, but in the eyes of these Ming soldiers, such situations where officers and soldiers shared the joys and sorrows were only heard in storytellers, but in reality, they never happened
I have never seen it. In fact, the biggest characteristic of the Chinese people is that they do not suffer from poverty, but suffer from injustice. Therefore, in the good atmosphere of the merchant army, the transformation of the old Ming army was relatively smooth.
After more than ten days of transformation, although more than 300 people quit because they couldn't bear it, the mental state of the remaining soldiers has been significantly improved, although the vast majority of them have not yet become formal soldiers.
Skill standards, but after training, you can also do some auxiliary work with the auxiliary soldiers. At the same time, more Ming troops are also willing to join the merchant army. Therefore, in the merchant army now, Ming troops like this
The number has now reached more than 1,800. Regarding this, Shang Yi is still the same as before, accepting all comers, but they must accept the transformation and training of the Merchant Army. And he is also trying to name them the Merchant Army Reserve.
In the previous stage of the battle, the merchant army lost a total of 317 soldiers. Shang Yi saw that the transformation of the old Ming army in the previous stage was quite effective, so he also held a selection competition to train a batch of soldiers.
The Ming army with excellent academic performance joined the merchant army and officially became a member of the merchant army.
For this reason, Shang Yi also officially held a meeting to welcome new soldiers to join the merchant army. This not only made these Ming soldiers very excited, but also was a great encouragement to other soldiers in the reserve: Shang Yi meant what he said.
As long as you train seriously, abide by discipline, and meet the standards, you can be officially selected into the Merchant Army. Therefore, the training will be more serious and hard.
In the battle to defeat Li Zicheng, the Merchant Army captured many more prisoners. Now the total number of prisoners is close to more than 4,000. The management method of the prisoners is still the same as before, using the points and levels system to divide and manage them. Because of the previous one,
stage experience, and at the same time had the demonstration examples of the previous batch of prisoners, and many more reserve team members were added to help manage the prisoners. Therefore, although the number of prisoners has almost doubled, they are still quite easy to manage and do not need to
Shang Yi couldn't worry more.
However, the increase in the number of people also made the food reserves of Shang's army begin to be tight. Now that De'an Mansion's food and grass supplies have been exhausted for less than a month, Shang Yi is also considering asking Wu Di for food and grass.
At this time, Wu Di also came to De'an Mansion. The name was to inspect military affairs, but in fact he wanted to explain to Shang Yi and attack Zhang Xianzhong. So after some polite remarks, Wu Di also told Shang Yi Xiaozhi.
With reason, emotion, and inducement, he persuaded Shang Yi to turn against Zhang Xianzhong, and after Xu Ruo defeated Zhang Xianzhong, he recommended Shang Yi to the imperial court as the commander-in-chief.